Trade for Balls

An issue I struggle with at work has to do with forms. I encourage, ask, beg, people to utilize the order forms I've created, but they seem to disregard my requests.

Today I received one such reservation that had, hand-written across the bottom, the words "Trade for Balls." It did not include a ticket face order form that would tell me what what tag lines to use, what dates to print, etc. Without a ticket face order form, I might generally print whatever information I find on the reservation. Still, does this person really want me to print, and mail out, 100 tickets that say "trade for balls?" ("Valid any one operating day 2014?").

This verbage jumps out at me thaks to an incident at school yesterday. While lecturing on "direct object pronouns" to my high school class, I casually picked up one student's spiral-bound notebook to use in my illustration. I emphatically proclamed, "give me the book, give it to ME." I pretended to hand the notebook over to another student in the front of the room, repeating, "give Alex the book, give IT to HER."

I noticed that the young man I'd "borrowed" the book from seemed to be shrinking in his chair. His face was red. Now waking up to the fact that something was going on, I saw that several students were giggling.

Turning the notebook over I read, written in extra-large teenage "grafitti" letters, the words "I Love Balls." I'd been lecturing in front of 25 students, waving a notebook written with the words, "I Love Balls."

Fantastic.

It's a good thing I'm the mother of 4 boys because I could almost contain my embarassment and my own laughter.

I returned the notebook to the student(at least I had his attention, this student-athlete who seems, most of the time, to be half asleep.)

So now I'm using my teacher skills at work, in hopes of some cooperation. I've returned the "no order form" reservation to the fellow employee who placed the order, eager to see corrections on Monday morning.